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We will continue to post information here about relevant news events or matters specific to the Campaign. 

Another day and yet another report of poor UK fiscal management.
This time it is a report prepared by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) regarding our F-35 military aircraft programme.
The report identifies increased costs due to attempts to make short term savings, operational issues and staff recruitment and retention problems.
It states: 'A root cause of the problems is that over many years the Department has adversely affected capability and value for money through its narrow and short-term approach to management and cost involving imposing delays and cuts to save money in-year. It has also failed to realistically appraise
the programme's whole-life cost. This year the Department more than tripled its previous estimate to almost £57 billion only because of the NAO audit'.
Evidently this new estimate does not include some non-equipment costs such as those relating to fuel, personnel and infrastructure which the NAO estimate would take the cost to £71 billion.
One of the report's findings states: 'Furthermore, aircraft availability is poor. The UK F-35 fleet achieved approximately one-third of the MoD target for the time it was able to fly all its required missions in 2024, and achieved only two-fifths of the level of availability of the global F-35B fleet between October 2024 and January 2025'.
The report identifies a significant shortage of trained personnel across a range of occupations to ensure the planes can operate. How can this happen? We invest in a fleet of state of the art planes but cannot develop the people we need to run the programme. We have amazing educational establishments, fantastic individuals but still cannot piece this together.
Our concern is not that we have elected to secure an advanced fighter jet capability, it is in the inefficient way that the programme is being operated and the poor outcomes that are being achieved.

02/11/2025

Yesterday the UK Home Affairs Committee published its report 'The Home Office's management of asylum accommodation'. It identifies how billions of pounds of our money has been squandered by Home Office mismanagement. To anyone concerned about immigration and the cost of processing and dealing with those who enter the asylum system this is a double kick in the teeth.
It is a very comprehensive report which covers a range of issues but below are just a few extracts:
'Over the past six years, the Home Office has presided over an increasingly expensive asylum accommodation system. The expected cost of the Home Office's asylum accommodation contracts for the ten years between 2019–29 has more than tripled, from £4.5 billion to £15.3 billion'
'The Home Office has become heavily reliant on the costly use of hotels for asylum accommodation—which are unpopular with local communities and largely unsuitable for accommodating asylum seekers. It has used large scale contracts with private providers to deliver asylum accommodation, but these contracts have provided few levers to control costs and ensure that providers are delivering the accommodation required'.
'The Home Office seems to have neglected the day-to-day management of these contracts, failing to protect value for money for the taxpayer. Two accommodation providers owe millions to the Home Office in excess profits, but the Home
Office only appears to have started the process for recouping these profits in 2024 and has yet to reclaim these profits from providers. This money should be supporting the delivery of public services, not sitting in the bank accounts of private businesses'.
This is just another example of where successive governments have failed to manage their activities and budgets properly and now we are on the verge of the Chancellor coming back to us to say that she needs more money off us. These people collectively have no sense of shame. We just get the trotted out response of 'we have learned lessons'. Sorry, you won't and this is just not acceptable. Who has resigned over this?

28/10/2025

Some things don't change. 

Whilst we push for the Government to own it and sort it as far as our fiscal situation is concerned Rachel Reeves is harping on about austerity, Brexit, and the ongoing impact of Liz Truss's mini-budget having weighed heavily on the UK economy. 

Move on. If you want to dwell on the past we can set aside an hour or two to outline the damage that you have caused in just the last 16 months.

15/10/2025

In our last post we said we would explain who the 'we' is in terms of who needs to steer the runaway fiscal coach away from the cliff edge.
The 'we' is all of us who have been given the right to vote for our politicians.
Currently politicians believe that tackling the fiscal issues (by that we mean the whole picture, not just a few selected areas) is likely to be hugely politically unpopular.
We need to convince them that we want them to produce a credible and effective plan and then ensure that we support them in delivering this. The turning point is when they see that to do so is a vote winner not loser.
It is interesting that in recent days Warren Buffett (chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway who is a highly successful investor) has indicated the same in the context of the US fiscal issues. In the US there was a view that by voting for Trump the voters were going to get public sector spending cuts and an improved fiscal position. The reality having passed the 'Big Beautiful Bill' is a likely increase in their National Debt over the coming years (but this is complicated by the effect of tariffs). This highlights the trust issues that are a major risk factor.
So, somehow the task is to start pushing our existing politicians to take fiscal decisions that will benefit us in the longer term. One way to provide encouragement and focus is for another party to make this its core objective and to test its popularity in terms of polls. Equally just exposing the idea to polling may be effective. If the current Government sees evidence that it is what we want they are better motivated to change direction.
So is it what we want? The 'do nothing' options means that we are exposed to economic pain, the timing, size, implications and remedies will be outside of our control.

14/10/2025

You are probably aware that the campaign is non-partisan. Some people do promote one party or another in the comments and whilst these are generally moderated out we do from time to time leave some in - just because it is a reflection of how you feel.

The reason for being non-partisan is because when you have a coach with failed brakes heading for a cliff changing drivers who will simply continue to promise to press on the brakes just doesn't work. You need someone who will grab hold of the steering wheel and not just turn it way from the cliff but press on the accelerator to get the coach to the top of the next hill (don't ask us what happens next but you can see what we are saying). 

Changing the party in power will not result in the tough changes that we require. In part the evidence for this is in our previous post regarding the (depressing) party conference season. They are all tinkering.

There is a lesson to be learnt from Reform's success in the local elections. Some may have been led to believe that they would get a grip on local government finances, cutting waste etc. It is today being reported that 8 of the Reform led councils are struggling to cut spending and are considering raising council tax. 

We need to steer the coach and not rely on repeated changes of driver (which is what has happened in the past).

We will explain who the 'we' is shortly.

11/10/2025

Whilst the campaign tries to be positive there is only one word that can be used to summarise the position regarding the political party conference season so far - depressing. 

Why? None of the parties has shown any serious intent to really get stuck into dealing with our fiscal issues. There has been a bit of noise but no substance. This was a chance for the Conservatives to be, well, conservative. They took a step towards that but nothing like the giant stride that is required. They indicated that the shadow cabinet had identified £47 billion in savings with half going towards 'reducing Labour's deficit' whilst the rest went to unleashing the economy. They promoted other measures including abolishing stamp duty and rowing back on some of the net zero policies and taxes. Whilst they were being more supportive of the British economy and business there was little to really give hope that if they were elected they could turn things around. In reality time and events before the next election will probably beat them.

Then there was the Greens - supporting immigration and proposing to abolish private landlords. Next..

Labour. Lots of talk but again no substance. Indicating that they wanted the economy to grow not just from the top but from the grass roots. Our comment would be then why put so many measures in place that actually deter this - such as Employers National Insurance and workers rights changes. So many entrepreneurs are currently being discouraged. Kier Starmer made a statement in his speech that 'Because a Labour Party that cannot control spending is a Labour Party that cannot govern in our times'. We suspect that that is one that will bite him. 

As for the Liberal Democrats.. It is really difficult to find anything that was remotely fiscally positive, they were constantly looking over their shoulders at Messrs Farage and Trump. Move on. 

Reform. They focussed on stopping the small boats, making serious cuts to the welfare budget, scrapping 'harmful, wasteful net zero policies', reindustrialising Britain, ending full subsidies on renewable energy and they recognised that they needed to do work to be ready for an early General Election. All these are arguably laudable but at this stage there is understandably no detail regarding how these would be achieved and, as they say, the devil is in the detail. 

So whilst other parties have yet to have their conferences you may be able to see why so far it has all been a bit depressing.

09/10/2025

Should the Government break its manifesto commitments not to increase income tax, national insurance and vat? As a reminder what they said was: 'We will ensure taxes on working people are kept as low as possible. Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.'
Given that the Chancellor has got a major fiscal shortfall to address (and in our view needs to tackle much wider fiscal issues that go way beyond what is perceived to be a £30 - £50 billion? initial shortfall) tapping into these funding sources is probably essential. There is talk about other sources of revenue but often they do not raise much tax or they discourage the business enterprise that underpins our economy.
Robert Peston whose political/economic opinions are widely heard commented on a recent podcast that effectively going against these commitments would be used by Reform against Labour all the way up to the next election. He did recognise that a crisis would potentially create a different background.
Is the view that going against the commitments would be political suicide - or are people just getting drawn into political group think? Looking at the polls neither Labour or Conservatives have anything to lose at the moment. Isn't the better thing for the politicians to come clean with us regarding the state of the finances - use some excuse if necessary such as the need for increased defence spending/cost of US tariffs/the need for increased resources to counter cyber attacks etc. and then just get on with doing what they really need to do regardless of the commitments? Our YouGov survey indicated that we want them to be open with us. When you look at some of the other fiscal commitments they are likely to miss them anyway.
It would be a gamble - and would have to be done alongside a clear plan to cut waste and inefficiency in the public sector but the chances are our borrowing costs would be eased and they might be rewarded for taking firm action and showing true leadership - which is currently lacking.
What are your thoughts?
As an aside - what were they thinking when they put those commitments into the Labour manifesto? On the back of years of Conservative self destruction they were shooting at an open goal. Why would you try to tie your hands like that!

27/09/25

Sorry for the relatively long last post regarding the NAO report. But it is important. 

The reason is that we are rapidly approaching a point where we are going to have to make some very difficult, uncomfortable and massively significant choices regarding our national finances. Typically with a recent commitment to increase our defence spending, more regular encroachments by foreign aircraft into NATO airspace and a need to bring more of our defence back 'in house' we are going to have to decide what our fiscal priorities really are. There are other massive financial risks that would overwhelm our finances and this post but we single out just this one. We are going to have to decide what we want. Do we increase welfare spending, allow inefficiencies and waste to go unchecked continue to make unaffordable public sector pay settlements etc. or do we defend ourselves? We cannot do all of them - successive Governments have failed to build a contingency fund and instead opted to create a debt mountain. 

No Government wants to have the conversation because in the very short term it isn't the popular thing to do. But look at what is happening in Europe - their failure to address the issue is causing social, political and financial upheaval which in no way will end well. 

The link back to the NAO report in the previous post is that Government must tackle its waste and inefficiency to make this difficult conversation a bit easier. 

20/09/25

The National Audit Office has just published a report entitled 'Improving Government's Productivity Through BetterCost Information'. 

At the risk of giving too much away for those of you who feel the need to read it, the highlights are that the report states that some Government departments have a limited understanding of the costs of individual services. Government expects to spend £450 billion annually on its operations, and yet some departments do not know the costs of individual services at a more granular level of detail, nor where excess costs arise from people having to work manually around cumbersome, old systems and poor-quality data from fragmented data sources.It states that the lack of cost information is a barrier to achieving Government's productivity aims.

Previous attempts to improve departmental cost information have suffered from inconsistencies in approach and lack of sustained focus on data infrastructure.The 'Top 75' programme led by the Central Digital & Data Office (now Government Digital Service) between 2022 and 2025 aimed to identify the costs in the 75 most used government services. A lack of sponsorship to improve data in departments and other public bodies limited its progress and the programme closed with only 29 of the top 75 services being assessed as 'great'. 

This highlights a recurring challenge: that without sustained effort, government will find it difficult to identify the basic data needed to understand what drives the cost of services and where money is being wasted so as to improve efficiency and productivity.

We will comment on this in the next post.

20/09/25

One issue that is developing that has a significant impact on our public sector finances is that of productivity growth both within the wider economy. The OBR has for some time taken what has turned out to be a rather optimistic view regarding our wider productivity growth. 

Whilst we try to focus on facts it is being reported in the media that the OBR are considering downgrading its estimate of likely productivity growth when it carries out its next review. A downgrade results in a significant adverse impact on our public sector finances. Intuitively it is hard to see any reason for any significant improvement in our productivity. 

We seem to be good at putting in place measures that adversely impact it and ride on the hope that AI is going to make rapid early productivity improvements possible.

20/09/25

Whilst we are pressing the political parties to be more open with us regarding the fiscal issues one area where we would like them and the media to frankly shut up is in relation to all the pre-budget speculation. The true cost of it will never be known but the uncertainty regarding whether or not stamp duty will be changed, pension tax allowances altered etc. all creates an environment where people do not know how or whether to act to mitigate against something that might not happen. 

An example is the fact that before the last fiscal event some people withdrew their 25% tax free money from their own pension funds only to find that the allowance was not affected and it was potentially the wrong thing to do. 

What makes things worse is the fact that it is a long wait until the Budget anyway. 

There used to be pre-budget purdah where it was a resignation matter if anything was leaked before the Budget announcement for fear of influencing the markets. Whilst the current situation isn't in relation to leaks - because decisions haven't yet been made it does create the instability. If the Government wants to test out any potential changes it can use its focus groups. What is the point of loading more uncertainty onto individuals, businesses and markets?

11/09/25

One of the fiscal issues that economists are flagging up at the moment is the increasing cost of the State Pension as we grow older and hopefully live a bit longer. In June 2025 the basic figures were:The expenditure on SP has increased from £123.9bn in FYE 2024 to £142.0bn in FYE 2025. That is an increase of £18.1bn in just one year. The overpayment rate was £190M in FYE ending 2025 and the underpayment rate was £450M. The fraud rate was zero. 

Unfortunately the spiralling cost of the state pension is an issue that we, society as a whole, need to address. To help get rid of the misinformation how much we might get in state pension is linked to how many years of National Insurance contributions we made. That money didn't get put in a pot ready for us to draw down - those contributions were used to pay other people's pensions at the time. Current pensions are being paid by current taxpayers. Unfortunately state pensioners don't have anything other than a moral contract to receive payment. The state pension was set up at a time when our life expectancy beyond retirement wasn't very long so the costs weren't particularly high. Now circumstances are much different. 

The issue is politically really difficult to address - so far the approach has been to raise the pension age - which means that generally younger generations are paying the state pension of current retirees with little prospect of getting much state pension themselves. 

The question is, is this really fair and is the responsible thing to do to abandon the triple lock? The triple lock means on average state pensions go up more in percentage terms than the wages of the people who are paying for them. 

Ultimately if our economy does go bang inflation is the likely result which means we are less likely to be able to afford the things we need. Other countries have failed to address this type of issue and as you can see in France has resulted in the social, political and economic upheaval the campaign really wants to avoid. 

We owe it to our kids and grandkids to ignore all the political issues and as a society have an honest debate.

11/09/25

Our Facebook page has attracted a lot of interest since it was launched only a few weeks ago. We have now have a page on 'X' @CampaignFiscal and will be working to grow that presence.

We have arranged a UK wide survey to establish people's position regarding two aspects of our public sector finances. A press notice is being prepared and we expect to publish the survey findings later this week

24/08/25